Hacienda Laborcilla — Restaurant in Querétaro

UPDATE 2: The event went swimmingly. We had 54 guests and plenty of wonderful servers. The splendor of the venue was diminished by the covering of the pool, though, and my advice to future event holders is to request in your agreement with the restaurant that the pool be uncovered and lit. My wife and I were never served the entree of the dinner, but I doubt we would have had time to eat it anyway. The food was delicious and our spot on the terrace was lovely, but the music from the bar did damper the family toasts.

I would recommend the la Laborcilla for lunch or dinner with a small group, but they should hire a dedicated event person to better handle the needs of larger groups.

UPDATE 1: The General Manager of La Laborcilla overheard the conversation with my wife and immediately contacted us via email and received my wife's call when she called back. He apologized for the staff's rude handling of the business and offered many consolations to keep our business. The covering of the pool will still happen, but it will be made of glass plate which allows the pool to shine even more.

I will update the review after the event, but I anticipate 5 stars having tasted the food, experienced the waitstaff service, and the lengths the management went to make its customers happy.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:The location is beautiful, excellent style hacienda that is pretty and serene. The food is also excellent, and these two factors allowed me to rate it a 2 star instead of a 1 star.

Imagine spending 14 months planning the wedding of your childhood dreams from another country. My wife to be did just that. She knew exactly which church to host the service, which venue to host the reception, and which restaurant to host the rehearsal dinner. This restaurant was Hacienda la Laborcilla and we booked it about 3 months ago for our rehearsal dinner of 50 people.

The dinner is this Friday, it is Tuesday, and the restaurant has just called to inform us that the reflecting pool will be covered in preparation for a wedding the next day. If you've been to this restaurant or even seen pictures, you know that the pool is the major attraction. It's the center of the hacienda and the reason why we reserved the patio in front of it. My wife complained that covering the pool makes the whole event less spectacular, but the restaurant rebutted and canceled our reservation.

I should believe that outright canceling our reservation for complaining was drastic, but during our months of communication with the restaurant we had very difficult times trying to contact someone who knew about our event. The management staff seems to be either arrogant or indecisive on any given day and they were constantly mixing up our event with other events (table placements, size, and whether or not we were a wedding).

We had traveled to the restaurant back in July and loved it for our luncheon, but I will never recommend this restaurant...

When we first entered, the host appeared as if he wasn't pleased to have us as guests. My wife told him we had reservations. He tried to sit us in the bar. Again, my wife reminded him we made reservations and wanted to be in the restaurant. We were walked through the main area (courtyard) where other diners were eating to a large room in the back that only had one table of guests. We didn't like the ambience and my wife then asked for a another table preferably in the beautiful courtyard where she had seen an empty table. She was was told that it was reserved to serve coffee to a group of men at an adjacent table. We are frequent restaurant guests and had never heard of such a thing. We were then led back to the original bar area to be seated because the host said there wasn't any more courtyard seating. The bar seating wasn't very pleasant. In my opinion, the tables weren't positioned to gain full view of the open windows to the courtyard, but were placed in front of the wall between the windows. There were several tables of guests in the bar, but no bar tender. However, I had noticed a bar tender at another bar in the restaurant, where there weren't any customers. After we ordered the drinks we waited and waited for drinks that never arrived because the server had to go far to the other bar, to get drinks. Shouldn't you have the bartender in the the bar where you're serving guests? By this time, we were just fed up and disappointed and decided to leave. We walked out and were waiting for a ride, when our waiter came to us and asked us to pay for the drinks we never received. He said he would have to pay for them if we didn't. I wasn't paying for a drink I didn't receive, so he went back and brought back the drink in a plastic cup and I paid him. Never did anyone from management come to us to try to resolve our concerns. The place is very pretty and expensive, but doesn't care...

Came on Valentine’s Day of all days LOL but guess what, they still seated us promptly! It was about 11:30, I think? Very spur of the moment, we were in downtown and had always wanted to drop by

Let me start with the bad: brunch options weren’t numerous. We had the French sandwich and avocado toast. We kinda knew what to expect: overpriced food that doesn’t taste that great but everything else is immaculate. And that’s what we got: I don’t say this in a bad way, please understand. It’s just, compared to everything else, the brunch food is so-so. There isn’t an amazing bread they give you. And the coffee was a little not-hot-enough. And the portions are small BUT it does taste good. It does look pretty. But if it wasn’t for the ambience I would never order from here, there’s hundreds of tiny places with one cook and one server that give you wonderful flavors at a quarter of the price, just gotta look for them.

So obviously, why come? Well, again, beautiful surroundings, beautiful people around you but I didn’t get the sense of presumptuous. Like, as long as you’re clean and quiet and respectful, they’ll let anybody in haha! It’s like a country club but without the membership and “need to know someone” vibe. The waiters are kind, the hostesses are sweet, the valet parking (not free, being cash BTW) is friendly and well organized.

Maybe lunch and dinner are better food-wise but you’ll need a reservation. So don’t be scared away by my food critique; take your mom or significant other here and take a breath. They’ll love you for it. It’s absolutely lovely and would recommend to anyone. (But maybe find a tacos de canasta truck down the street once you’re...